by Dale Peck
Randall Kenan is the author of the novel A Visitation of Spirits, the story collection Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, the monograph A Time Not Here (with photographer Norman Mauskopf), the biography James Baldwin: American Writer, and the nonfiction books Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the 21st Century and The Fire This Time. He is also the editor of The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, the John Dos Passos Prize, and the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, among others.
Kevin Killian’s several books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry include Bedrooms Have Windows, Shy, Little Men, Arctic Summer, Argento Series, I Cry Like a Baby, Action Kylie, Impossible Princess, Tweaky Village, and Spreadeagle. With Peter Gizzi, he edited My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer, which won the American Book Award. He has edited several other books, written numerous plays, and is the co-founder of Poets Theater and the publishing house Small Press Traffic, as well as the editor of the poetry zine Mirage.
Jamaica Kincaid is the author of the novels Annie John, Lucy, The Autobiography of My Mother, Mr. Potter, and See Now Then. Her nonfiction books include A Small Place, My Brother, Talk Stories, My Garden Book, and Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalayas. Her short fiction has been collected in At the Bottom of the River. Among the many prizes and fellowships she has received are the Morton Dauwen Zabel Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Lannan Literary Award, and the Prix Femina Étranger, as well as induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jim Lewis is the author of the novels Sister, Why the Tree Loves the Axe, and The King Is Dead. In addition to his fiction, he is a noted art critic and journalist. He has written monographs for more than thirty artists, including Richard Prince, Christopher Wool, and Larry Clark, with whom he also collaborated on the story for Clark’s film Kids. His journalism has appeared in GQ, Granta, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and Vanity Fair, among dozens of other publications.
Jaime Manrique has written more than a dozen books, including Los adoradores de la luna; El cadáver de papá; Colombian Gold; Scarecrow; Latin Moon in Manhattan; My Night with Federico Garcia Lorca; Sor Juana’s Love Poems; Twilight at the Equator; Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me; The Autobiography of Bill Sullivan; Our Lives Are the Rivers; and Cervantes Street. He was awarded Colombia’s National Poetry Award for his first book of poems, as well as an International Latino Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Patrick McGrath is the author of the novels The Grotesque, Spider, Dr. Haggard’s Disease, Asylum, Martha Peake: A Novel of the Revolution, Port Mungo, Trauma, and Constance, as well as the short story collections Blood and Water and Ghost Town: Tales of Manhattan Then and Now. He also wrote the screenplay adaptations for The Grotesque and Spider.
Susan Minot is the author of the novels Monkeys, Folly, Evening, Rapture, and Thirty Girls, as well as the short story collection Lust. She has also written a book of poetry, Poems 4 a.m., and the screenplays Stealing Beauty and Evening (with Michael Cunningham). Among her prizes are the Prix Femina Étranger, an O. Henry Prize, and a Pushcart Prize.
Eileen Myles’s poems, stories, and essays have been collected in Not Me; Chelsea Girls; On My Way; School of Fish; Cool for You; Skies; Sorry, Tree; Tow; The Importance of Being Iceland; Different Streets; Snowflake; and I Must Be Living Twice. She is also the author of the novel Inferno. With Liz Kotz, she edited the anthology The New Fuck You: Adventures in Lesbian Publishing. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Art Writers grant, a Lambda Book Award, and the Shelley Prize from the Poetry Society of America.
Sarah Schulman’s novels are The Sophie Horowitz Story; Girls, Visions and Everything; After Delores; People in Trouble; Empathy; Rat Bohemia; Shimmer; The Child; The Mere Future; and The Cosmopolitans. Her nonfiction books are My American History, Stagestruck, Ties That Bind, The Gentrification of the Mind, and Israel/Palestine and the Queer Imagination. Her plays include Mercy, Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and Enemies, a Love Story, adapted from the story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. Among her many prizes are a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Fulbright, two New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships, a Revson Fellowship, and two American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards.
Lynne Tillman is the author of the novels Haunted Houses, Motion Sickness, Cast in Doubt, No Lease on Life, and American Genius: A Comedy, as well as the nonfiction books Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co., and The Velvet Years: Warhol’s Factory 1965–1967. Her short story collections include Absence Makes the Heart, The Madame Realism Complex, This Is Not It, and Someday This Will Be Funny, while her nonfiction has been collected in The Broad Picture and What Would Lynne Tillman Do? She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
Laurie Weeks is a writer and performer whose 2011 novel Zipper Mouth received the Lambda Literary Award Best for Best Debut Novel and was shortlisted for the Edmund White Award. Since the mid-80s her work has appeared in such publications as LA Weekly, The Baffler, Vice, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer For Freedom, Whitney Biennial 2012, Nest, Apology, and Semiotext(s)’s The New Fuck You. A contributing screenwriter to Boys Don’t Cry, her latest chapbook is I Watch the Human (New Herring Press). Weeks directed the original incarnation of Eileen Myles’s opera Hell; toured with Sister Spit; and co-founded—with artists Charles Atlas and Nicole Eisenman, among others—NYC’s underground cult series The Summer of Bad Plays. Weeks has performed widely, including downtown NYC venues including the Pyramid Club, The Kitchen, P.S. 122, LaMama, and Jackie 60. Currently she runs The Dr. Weeks Institute for Ecstatic Juvenile Delinquency and its workshop division The School for Vulnerable Little Tinies.
David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992) was an artist, writer, and activist whose books include Sounds in the Distance, Tongues of Flame, Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration, Memories That Smell Like Gasoline, Seven Miles a Second (with James Romberger and Marguerite Van Cook), Waterfront Journals, Rimbaud in New York 1978–1979 (edited by Andrew Roth), In the Shadow of the American Dream: The Diaries of David Wojnarowicz (edited by Amy Scholder), and Willie World (with Maggie J. Dubris). His art has been shown at numerous galleries and institutions, including PPOW, Artists Space, the Whitney Biennial, SFMOMA, the Tate Modern, and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.